Wonderkid

by Wesley Stace

  Along the edge of the crowd, at the very perimeter, there was some unrest. This was where MOMs and their various acolytes had gathered and, at any lull in the set, they booed loudly, boos almost immediately drowned out by cheers.

  “I guess there’s a little boo in everyone,” said Blake, before the band hurtled into “Dan, Beth, Chris, and Blank.”

  As the show stormed to its finale, however, I could tell that Blake was reaching for something he couldn’t quite grasp, but it didn’t seem out of the ordinary when he introduced the penultimate song: “You know, sometimes you make mistakes, and the world gets at you, but when you make a mistake, your family forgives you, and that’s when you know you’re at home!” And everybody applauded. “To people who can only see the bad in things, I say, that’s sad. And for everybody here, and watching on TV, I want to say, thank you. This song is called ‘Life, As It Is Lived.’” As he sang, I realized it was actually all about me. And then I wondered if everybody listening was feeling that at the same moment. It was magical.

  Somehow during Blake’s wild pogo and ludicrous scissor kick at the climax of the song, he ripped his pants, and when the song finished, he noticed that the right pocket was flopping about. It looked like it was inside out. I watched him as he tried to sort out exactly what had happened, but he was in that onstage space where sometimes you can’t figure out the simplest thing.

  “Blimey,” he said, “I’ve ripped my pants. We’ve got one more song to play for you; I hope they stay up!” Everybody cheered. And then he said in his trademark terrible Mockney: “I think I popped a button on my trousers. I hope they don’t fall down. You wouldn’t want my trousers to fall down now, would you?” It was Mick Jagger on that live album. We’d seen the film on the bus. I’d heard Blake say it a million times in so many different contexts that it hardly seemed like the beginning of the end.

  The protestors took this as a provocation. For a relatively small group, they were very spirited, like the away fans at a football match. The rest of the crowd, the families, had never been up for a serious fight over civil liberty issues, and they’d been baking in the sun for a long while now. Children were getting fractious; ice creams had melted; diapers were full; real food had not been consumed in some time. It was a tinderbox.

  Blake seemed somewhat put out by the fuss. He’d given his all in the heat. But the fact remained that he’d been striving for a moment of artistic nirvana that had eluded him, and this was his opportunity. Does a switch flip? Does a light go on? I’ve no idea. But it was now too late. The Eureka moment had happened.

  “Oh, you guys, stop ruining everybody else’s fun. We’re going to play ‘Rock Around the Bed’”—great cheering—“Ready, band? Not yet! First, I’ve got to look in here to find something to cover myself up. This rip isn’t getting any smaller.” The band was enjoying the teasing, ready for the count, when Blake shouted: “Love me. I can’t take it no more without no good love. I want some lovin’. Ain’t nobody gonna love my ass?”

  I had no idea what he was going on about, nor why he was suddenly talking about “ass,” nor that he had transported us, unwitting victims, to the Dinner Key Auditorium in Coconut Grove, Miami, to a 1969 Doors concert in a packed hangar. It was the night Jim Morrison tried to start a riot and ended up getting done for indecent exposure.

  “This is the end,” he said, looking through the dressing-up box, and then, when nothing came to hand, removing his shirt. “This is the end. One more song. The blue bus is callin’ us.” Then he started reciting lines ending up with “Father, I want to kiss you. Mother, I want to—” He interrupted himself. “Hey, you at the back!” He gesticulated at the protestors. “Hey, you at the back! You! Idiots! You wanna see a little skin? Shall we get naked? All the kids! Take your shirts off and wave them around!”

  Blake kind of waved his shirt in front of the crotch of his pants like he was going to do some magic trick, make a rabbit appear or something. Certainly, he made some suggestive movements, but at this point fathers were more worried about how long it would take to get to, then exit, the parking lot; they just wanted the last song to start. There was no way the kids were leaving before the last song: they wanted glorious memories of “Rock Around the Bed” rather than the small satisfaction of having beaten traffic.

  “You wanna see it?” Blake asked. That was the turning point. Laughter was one thing; entertainment was one thing; even saying “ass” was one thing; but the Wonderkids had form when it came to flashing, and nobody wanted the expense of sending their children through therapy. “You wanna see it?” He asked again, all confrontation. Cameras froze around him—this wasn’t what they’d come to film, but if this was what was happening, they’d film it. “Come on. You’re so scared of it. But you wanna see it. You don’t like it. But you wanna see it.” He turned to the band. “‘Rock Around the Bed’? ‘Rock Around the Bed’! 1,2,3,4!”

  And at that precise moment, as the band kicked into the song, Blake whipped the scarf away in front of every single member of the audience to reveal for a horrific moment, his penis, hanging limply, and slimly, out of his trousers.

  People started to scream, like, really scream, like they do in horror films and when the Beatles arrive. But, hang on, I’d seen his actual cock a million times—as one does—though not up close of course—and this didn’t look much like it. And Blake was still standing there with this thing hanging from his fly and a great big smile on his face, because the thing hanging from his fly was his finger: classic kid’s playground gag. Classic Blake. He was so pleased with himself, the quality of the gag, that he just stood there with his hand down the front of his pants and his index finger waggling away. The kids would love it!

  All I could see were people’s backs as they packed away hampers and headed for the parking lots with their disappointed, uncomprehending offspring. There were still people watching, but rather in the manner of rubberneckers on the freeway. There were also people throwing stuff. The MOMs and their various affiliates were incandescent, lathered into a frenzy at what they thought they’d seen. Or at what they had seen: they’d seen what they wanted to see. And suddenly there was Jacquelyn Belmer herself, large as life, all in white like a violent Gandhi, with a fucking megaphone. A megaphone! Which air-conditioned trailer had she been hunkering down in, putting on her makeup, fussing with her pearls, waiting for this precise moment to make herself known to the cameras?

  By halfway through the song, police had gathered at the side of the stage, blocking the exits, and it was becoming the least joyful version of “Rock Around the Bed” of all time. Blake went over to the side of the stage and shouted at one of the cops: “It was my finger, right? Did you get that?” The policeman made a ludicrous “Why I oughta!” gesture, and Blake took refuge at the central microphone, like a kid shouting “this is base!” to his friends while he gets his breath back.

  There were those in the crowd who hadn’t noticed what had happened at all—you’d be amazed how much people miss at events they’re actually attending—but even they now knew, and they didn’t want to miss out on the outrage. Word was spreading. Had he done it? Either he had or he pretended he had, but he shouldn’t have done either. The stage was now the only place Blake was safe. He was completely surrounded. The band played manfully on as the Titanic went under, and the MOMs groups worked their way to the front. Blake couldn’t stop laughing. It may well have been helpless, nervous laughter, but there was something remarkably surreal about the whole thing. One playground sight gag!

  And then, with the song about to end, Blake turned, caught my eye, and gave me a look I knew well, the one that preceded mayhem. What he was communicating, I had absolutely no idea, but I was ready. Mei-Xing saw it too and grabbed my hand: “Be careful,” she said. “Stay here with me.”

  And as the band continued, the police looking on from the side of the stage, Blake sprinted towards me, grabbed my hand, and we ran to the back of the stage, past Camille and Curtis, where we took a flying leap, But
ch and Sundance style, to the ground and legged it to the bus. The police were slow to realize what had happened and, by the time they got anywhere near the door, we were safely locked inside. How much time did we have? However long it took for the Bishop to hand over his key. He wouldn’t last as long as Mitchell, if he bothered to last at all.

  “It was my finger!” said Blake. “They think it was my . . .”

  “Everyone thought that.”

  “Oh god!” He was ecstatic, frightened, running on empty. “Now would be a really bad time to smoke a joint.”

  “Have a drink. Have a cigarette.”

  He opened the window a crack and dangled the very same offending finger outside, waggling it, in case anyone noticed.

  “Okay. Sweet, I have to sort a couple of things. I want you to stay here. Do not, under any circumstances, open the door.”

  It was now that they started banging: “This is the Maryland police, Mr. Lear. Please open the door.”

  It was amazing. It really was like Butch and Sundance. Did they have a last stand? Maybe it was more like Custer, circling the wagons, or High Noon: definitely some Western, anyway. I had no idea what to do.

  “Open up,” shouted the Bishop, suddenly the loud voice of reason as he ran down the side of the bus banging on windows. “Don’t make this worse, Blake.” He was loving it.

  “Okay,” said Blake, when he reappeared, sweaty. “There’s a box in the front coffin, up top, and a folder. Never look in them. Do not let the police find them. You have to get them off the bus and back to me.”

  “How on earth am I going to do that?

  “Try.”

  “Okay, Blake.”

  “Okay?” He fixed me with a stare.

  “Okay.”

  “Good boy. Well, I said we’d have fun. Well . . . bits of it were fun, weren’t they?”

  I buried my head in his chest. “Is it over?”

  “No. Never,” he said. “Well, temporarily. They can’t stand nonsense. Time to face the music.”

  He detached himself from me, put on a clean shirt, looked in the mirror and said: “Now’s when I wish I had that hair dryer. Fucking Mitchell.”

  He walked to the front of the bus, turned around and said: “It’s gonna get ugly and then I’m going to disappear. I love you, Sweet.”

  “I love you too, Blake.”

  We’d all gone a bit American.

  As he opened the door, I heard the rattle of camera shutters. Standing on the steps of the bus in front of the assembled crowd, Blake started to recite poetry. And there I was, with a load of weed in the back of our bus.

  Jim Morrison got six months for “indecent exposure and open profanity” with a recommendation of hard labor. The judge said he had “utter contempt for our institutions and heritage.” Morrison appealed and was bailed for $50,000. He never served time, dying before the lawsuit was resolved. At some point he was offered a plea bargain, if that’s the right phrase: all charges would be dropped if he played a free concert for the people of Miami. He refused. He was a spent force anyway. At that late date, you didn’t get the boyish Love God Lizard King; you got a fat, beardy, mumbler.

  Years later—last year or something—Morrison was pardoned by the Florida Clemency Board. Nowadays, it’d just be a wardrobe malfunction, exploited by the label, a breast milked for profits.

  Jack and I watched it all on CNN the next morning—everything was there in hideous detail: the glorious day, the gig, the climax, the flying leap off the back of the stage, the stand-off, even that little detail of Blake appearing to give the police “the finger” out of the bus window. No, you fools! You can’t tell a finger from a penis, sure, but can’t you tell a finger from the finger?

  Best of all—and there was a lot of competition—was Blake standing at the top of the steps of the bus, blinking in the light in his fresh shirt, reciting to the camera:

  How pleasant to know Mr. Lear!

  Who has written such volumes of stuff!

  Some think him ill-tempered and queer,

  But a few find him pleasant enough.

  He has ears, and two eyes, and ten fingers,

  Leastways if you reckon two thumbs;

  He used to be one of the singers,

  But now he is one of the dumbs.

  It was a final short turn for the kids before they went to bed. “Good night little ones,” he said as he finished. “Time to go home, Blake is waving goodbye, goodbye. Blake is going home now. Goodbye.” Then, offering his wrists for handcuffs that were not forthcoming, he descended into a sea of policemen in which his head bobbed like flotsam.

  We were magicked back to the studio where the anchor concluded: “Mr. Lear, recently bailed on a charge of cocaine possession in New York City, was found in possession of marijuana. All this on top of his remarkable performance at the pay-per-view concert.” A caption flashed up: OUT OF CONTROL.

  “Not the kind of person we want entertaining our children. We spoke to the legendary Simeon, father of Becca Fonseca, the band’s previous bass player.” And, yes, to cap it all, there was an interview with Simeon, in front of a heartwarming fire, his guitar purring cozily on his lap.

  “Do you think,” asked the interviewer, “that we ask too much of our performers?”

  “Well, I’m okay,” said Simeon, giving a less sympathetic response than the talking head had perhaps hoped. “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. I don’t know if anyone really knows Blake Lear. Certainly, my daughter left the band to get away from him. And her replacement felt almost a hostage in the band, had already announced her departure and traveled separately by her own choice, fearing Lear’s influence on her child.”

  This was followed by an interview with a cheerful, possibly post-orgasmic, Jacquelyn Belmer, above the caption VINDICATED. She was happy to plug a book, shortly to be published, called American Quilt: Sewing the Moral Fabric of America, in which there would be a whole chapter on the threat of the Wonderkids. With the band getting her such good publicity, it was almost certain to hit the bestseller list.

  Footage of the festival ran yet again, and there was Blake once more on the steps. Back in the studio, the anchor concluded: “Blake Lear of the Wonderkids: we’ll be keeping a close eye on this story as it develops. Weather.”

  The court dates were set: two separate trials in different states. Bail looked unlikely. Sadly, he was not to be tried for incitement to riot, or revealing himself on stage. Those “crimes” just annoyed everyone.

  The bus was searched and impounded. I wasn’t even allowed to remove personal possessions, including, though I knew I was letting Blake down, the box he’d wanted me to take. It wasn’t my fault: I’m not a magician. I couldn’t just disappear it, spirit it away. The authorities weren’t letting anything off until they were good and ready. I was, however, able to sneak his folder out, stuffed down the front of my shirt, though I can’t imagine they’d have been greatly interested in this selection of indecipherable rambling. All that was written on the front: “Clock,” with a classic Blake doodle of the forces of evil looming over some innocent child. But the box was staying. I couldn’t do a thing about it, whatever it was: with any luck, not that we’d had any luck recently, there was nothing too incriminating back there.

  As they made their first sweep of the bus, I was sitting outside with Jack. A cop emerged with a little metal contraption. I’d never seen it before; it was some part of an engine. The cop confided: “We know this is what you use to cook your coke.” I could barely muster a laugh.

  “What?” said Jack. “There’s no drugs on that. Test it. It’s a spigot, something from the engine. Ask the driver.”

  “We’re clean,” I said, speaking a language the cop would understand. He cackled and disappeared back on the bus.

  “Don’t say we’re clean,” said Jack. “That’s not the way you normally talk. It’s drug language. It makes us sound guilty.” He went quiet for a moment, watching a sniffer dog wag its happy tail as it clamb
ered aboard. “And we are guilty. This is gonna be bad. I’ve gotta make some calls.”

  The Bishop left the sinking ship. The band played on no longer. We waited for final news about Blake’s bail. If there had been gigs, there would have been no one left to play them.

  Camille, Curtis, Mei-Xing, and Aslan flew back to California so, with Hell in custody, we requisitioned Heaven, taking Randy with us. He felt as out of place in their sweet-smelling bus as we did.

  “See you soon,” Mei-Xing had said as we lay in our last hotel bedroom. “We’ll both be eighteen next time we see each other.”

  “God, I hope not. Maybe we’ll be even older,” I said, my head resting on her thigh. She smelled bready. “When are you nineteen?”

  “Same day I’m sixteen. When are you eighteen?”

  “August.”

  “I’ll see you before then.”

  That was our last time together.

  Jack and I lived on the bus, aimlessly, watching movies—the ones the police hadn’t impounded. It’s tedious enough living life on the road when there are gigs; when there aren’t, you’re just going around in circles. Randy was sinking into depression, muttering grim phrases like, “Give me a destination, man, further the better.”

  “Sorry,” I’d say. “We just have to hang tight. Keep close until Blake needs us.”